Alexis Courbet

The conversion of chemical energy into mechanical work can be regarded as the most technologically transformative advances of modern science. Yet, even decades after Feynman’s insights on molecular machines, the capability to perform useful work remains limited to the macroscale. The realization that natural molecular motors generate mechanical forces at the nanoscale by using biochemical energy, has recently brought many to contemplate the design of synthetic biomolecular motors. Molecular motors found in nature are made of proteins: versatile, modular, functional and genetically encodable polymers capable of self-assembling with sequence-dependent programmability, which promises a vast playground for the design of synthetic nanomachines. While theoretically simple, the physical principles that governs the operation of natural protein motors have remained inaccessible to synthetic approaches to biology…